Links of the week | R4

Here are my choice of links for the past week.

SQL Server:
- Gail Shaw’s SQL Server Deadlocks by Example provides a good overview of deadlocks in SQL Server, with advice on how to detect and avoid them.
- Thomas Kejser’s Clustered Indexes vs. Heaps analyses common table usage scenarios to determine whether using clustered indexes is a good option.
- Keeping with the clustered index subject, Marcus Winand’s Unreasonable Defaults: Primary Key as Clustering Key provides a detailed analysis of what a clustered index is and how it affects other existing table indexes, leading to the (implied) question of whether setting a primary key as a clustered index is a good option at all.
- Juergen Thomas’s New functionality in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2 – New Cardinality Estimation explains the role of cardinality estimation in query execution, addresses the changes in cardinalily estimation in SQL Server 2014 and provides some examples of how the changes affect query execution. An excellent read.
- Paul White’s Cardinality Estimation for Multiple Predicates also addresses the subject of cardinality estimation, but covers the use of multiple predicates in a query. The article shows how the default behavior can be avoided through the use of trace flags. It also addresses the changes in cardinality estimation and the use of related trace flags in SQL Server 2014.
- Thomas LaRock’s How to: restore the master database in SQL Server 2012 shows how the master database can be restored in a SQL Server 2012 instance.
- Tim Wieman’s Scaling-out SQL Server disks and data files on Windows Azure Virtual Machines…a real-world example provides an example of scaling out disks and data files (in this case for TempDB) on an Azure VM. The article includes many useful reference links.
- Hugo Kornelis’s Generating Test Data in TSQL addresses test data generation, in a situation where the data needs to follow a distribution and columns are not independent.
- Brent Ozar’s How to Query the StackExchange Databases shows how the Stack Exchange databases can be accessed and queried, both through a browser or actually downloading the data to a local instance of SQL Server. If you ever need real data for query tuning, the article shows a way to get it.
- Glen Berry’s SQL Server Diagnostic Information Queries for January 2014 includes the latest version of the author’s diagnostic information queries.

Web Design and Development:
- Jon Galloway’s ASP.NET – A last look back at 2013, looking ahead to 2014 is a good overview of what happened with ASP.NET during 2013 and what to expect in 2014, with links to many resources relevant for those who work with ASP.NET.
- Shawn Wildermuth’s Why Should You Care About NodeJS? explains what .NET developers can learn from NodeJS and why they should have a look at it and consider using it in some projects.
- Steve Hansen’s HTML5: Myths and misconceptions provides a bit of history on HTML 5 and tries to debunk some of the rising myths about what it is and what it offers.
- Jonathan Cutrell’s Web Design 2014: What to Watch Out For makes some predictions on what to expect on the field of web design, for 2014.
- Pete Hodgson’s Keeping jQuery in Check proposes a segregated DOM to avoid the pitfalls of what the author describes as ‘jQuery soup’, an indiscriminate intermingling of $ references, AJax calls, application logic and business rules.

Big Data / BI:
- Josh Polsky and Yaniv Mor’s ETL – Is it Still Relevant? states that ETL is still very much relevant in big data scenarios and explains why.
- Merv Adrian’s AAA is Not Enough Security in the Big Data Era argues for the need of anonymization or deidentification in an era, where big data will be increasingly used for medical, commercial and security reasons.
- Alexei Khalyako’s Expanding HDP Hadoop file system to Azure Blob Storage shows how to take advantage of the cheap cost and scalability of Azure Blob Storage, expanding available storage beyond the 16TB available in a HD Insight cluster.
- Rob Kerr’s Submitting C# MapReduce jobs on Windows Azure HDInsight is a video showing how to create and execute C# MapReduce jobs on Azure’s HDInsight.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.

Here are my choice of links for the past week.

SQL Server:
- Brent Ozar’s What’s the Smallest SQL Server You Should Build? provides some advice on the hardware configuration for a “small” SQL Server that gets the best value from the licensing costs of SQL Server 2012, considering both the Standard and Enterprise Editions and physical and virtual servers.
- Klaus Aschenbrenner’s Why Transaction Log Auto Growths are degrading your performance explains why transaction log auto growth can bring performance problems
- Michael J. Swart’s SQL Simplicity Methods recommends that SQL is kept simple and provides some advice on how that can be achieved.
- Erin Stellato’s Performance Issues: The First Encounter provides a list of what to looks for when confronted with a performance issue in an unfamiliar environment.
- Jeremiah Peschka’s Dynamic Sorting presents an uncommon way to sort a query by a user specified criteria.
- Greg Low’s Reliably Dropping a Database in a T-SQL Script is Too Hard addresses the issue of ensuring a reliable way to drop a database using only T-SQL.
- Basit Farooq’s Understanding SQL Server Query Optimization – Part 4 addresses query optimization using the Database Engine Tuning Advisor.

Web Design and Development:
- Tero Piirainen’s Frameworkless JavaScript, in a very interesting post, explains the reasons for choosing not to use a Javascript framework when building Moot.
- Rob Eisenberg’s Durandal: Quick Start provides a brief introductory tutorial to Durandal.
- Derick Bayley’s SOLID JavaScript In A Wobbly World (Wide Web) provides a set of resources, including a video on applying SOLID principles to Javascript development.
- Aurelio De Rosa’s Managing Custom Data with the HTML5 Dataset API explains what the HTML5 data attributes are and how the Dataset API allows programmatic access to such attributes.
- Gabrielle Gosha’s 20 Distinctive Navigation Menu Designs provides links to 20 very interesting navigation menu designs.

Software Development:
- Tim Bray’s Software in 2014 provides an interesting analysis of the software development scenario, both server and client side as we enter 2014.
- Shivprasad Koirala’s SOLID architecture principles using simple C# examples presents and exemplifies, in a simple away the application of the SOLID architecture principles, using C# as the implementation language.
- David Budgen’s Design Patterns: Magic or Myth? describes an attempt to find an answer to whether design patterns are an effective way to exchange design knowledge and whether they help create designs that are simple to understand and maintain. The perceived reply, specifically to the second question, is not that clear.
- Neil Potter’s Scrum Lessons from the Trenches tries to address some of the challenges facing Scrum application by project teams.

Big Data / BI:
- Mike Wood’s An Introduction to Windows Azure Table Storage provides a good introduction to using Azure’s Table Storage, a key-value pair, non relational, storage.
- James Kobelius’s What Koby’s tea leaves foretell for big data in 2014 presents some predictions on what may happen in multiple big data related technologies in 2014.
- James Serra’s Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse Assessment provides the author’s view on how the steps needed to conduct a BI / data warehouse assessment.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.

R4

Random Ramblings (on Technology, Programming and Databases,) by Rui Ribeiro

Category Archives: Links of the week

My links of the week – January 19, 2014

My links of the week – January 12, 2014